


Foothold

by havocthecat



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Threshold
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-25
Updated: 2010-02-25
Packaged: 2017-10-07 13:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havocthecat/pseuds/havocthecat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They need to expand both programs' parameters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foothold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trascendenza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trascendenza/gifts).



Janet encounters the Threshold program in its infancy. There was an Air Force officer on that Navy freighter, and the body is mutated enough that someone sees it and ships it to her.

She loves doing alien-related autopsies, but her eagerness for knowledge is balanced out by empathy for the dead man's family, who can never learn how he died.

When Janet finishes, she talks to General Hammond, who calls Andrea Hatten, who calls Molly Caffrey. It's one of the more interesting meetings of her career. She can't even tell SG-1.

That's when they implement foothold protocols at the SGC.

***

Carolyn Lam takes over a few years later. Her dad doesn't even know about this one, but the reason that Jack recruited someone from the CDC wasn't because of the possibility of an alien pathogen spreading on Earth.

There's already an alien pathogen spreading on Earth. The news terrifies her.

She meets with Molly Caffrey, and accepts condolences on the death of Janet Fraiser, a woman she barely knew. They sit down with binders and notebooks, and hammer out an update of foothold protocols.

Carolyn wants to believe she's prepared for anything. For humanity's sake, she hopes she's not wrong.

***

Vala isn't exactly _supposed_ to be poking around in the classified medical files, but they've been confined to Earth for days. Staying on one planet for any length of time is boring.

That's what she says when Carolyn catches her at it, anyway.

More than anything, knowledge is power. Most of the time, Vala hoards it, doling facts out one scrap at a time. Confronted with these files and the Carolyn Lam's anger, she tells about the planet infected by something very like the Threshold virus.

She meets Molly Caffrey when they go through the Stargate together with Carolyn Lam.

***

There's nothing left alive, just an old, abandoned Ancient lab full of data. Vala knows about it from her first trip, but she's not being pursued all the way back to the Stargate by a horde of angry monsters. This time. They download the data and blow the lab.

Vala's knowledge of Ancient is sketchy, and Daniel can't help. It makes translation difficult.

It seems they created the Threshold program to protect the denizens of the galaxy in the event of a catastrophe. Like most things Ancient, it went horribly awry.

They panic when Vala finds the glyph for Atlantis.

***

It's not that Elizabeth isn't glad for the backup, but it's a little hard to focus when half her senior staff has been infected.

Carson is working on a cure; Jennifer's trying to infect everyone. Rodney and Radek are trying to spread the pathogen through Atlantis' speaker system; Miko has them stopped cold.

Teyla and Ronon are trading stories of horrors that scare even the Wraith. This is one. John knows Atlantis like the back of his hand. He's the only one who has a hope of finding Lorne now that he's been infected.

Elizabeth and Teyla arm the self-destruct.

***

Molly and Elizabeth look at each other across the room. Major Lorne is in the control tower, his gun out and aimed at Elizabeth. She's willing to die for Atlantis.

John and Teyla have their guns aimed at Major Lorne. His finger tightens on the trigger.

A burst of music, loud and discordant, erupts from the speakers. The sound is jagged on Molly's nerves, raw and exposed from days of living on coffee and MREs. She, Lucas, and Cavennaugh collapse. So does Major Lorne.

Miko and Carson's voices come into their earpieces. It's a cure.

There's hope for Earth yet.

\--end--


End file.
